OPP joins DiFranco on winter tour
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 30, 2007. CONTACT: Kerri Glover for OPP,
Tel: 843.971.4344
Organic Process Productions' Hurricane Katrina Media Tour Hits the Road with Ani DiFranco
Charleston, S.C. – Organic Process Productions’ (OPP) multimedia Hurricane Katrina Media Tour will travel with Righteous Babe Records recording artist Ani DiFranco to eight cities during her 10-concert Winter Tour of Canada and the United States.
The cooperative arrangement aligns with OPP’s goal of taking the Hurricane Katrina Media Tour to new audiences. The traveling event features:
- Trailer and materials from the grassroots volunteer groups depicted in filmmaker (and OPP co-founder) Farrah Hoffmire’s Falling Together in New Orleans, a feature-length collection of solo citizen journalism vignettes documenting life in New Orleans after the storm;
- Hoffmire’s Katrina Ballads/CNN mashup “Who are you Angry At?” a video loop combining tape from a May performance of Ted Hearne’s musical composition Katrina Ballads with footage of the actual 2005 CNN interview that inspired the passage;
- OPP’s Media Circus exhibit, exploring the uses of mass media in creating the collective images of “current events” in modern culture;
- The Post-Katrina Portrait Project, a collection of handwritten stories and charcoal portraits by Common Ground Collective “embedded artist” Francesco Di Santis; and
- Exhibits from Japanese-American artist Takashi Horisaki’s Social Dress New Orleans installation at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. Takashi rendered a storm-damaged home in the 9th Ward in latex and hung it outdoors in the Queens park overlooking Manhattan.
“We think it is important not to let New Orleans, like so much else on the news, disappear into that memory vacuum,” said Mitchell Davis, co-founder of OPP and producer of Falling Together in New Orleans. “The artists in the Hurricane Katrina Media Tour have an intention and authenticity in their works that we believe will resonate with Ani’s audience. The primary source and grassroots nature of these media projects lends itself to physically touring, and we hope it will give people a more meaningful human connection to what’s happening in one of our nation’s most culturally important places.”
The tour with DiFranco, who lives in New Orleans, kicks off with shows on November 6 and 7 in Toronto, Ontario, followed by dates in Boston (November 9); Baltimore (November 10); Asheville, NC (November 11); Atlanta (November 13); Durham, N.C. (November 14); Washington, D.C. (November 15); and concludes with a pair of shows in New York City on November 17 and 18. DiFranco's full schedule is available www.righteousbabe.com/tour/index.asp.
OPP is a for-profit social venture headquartered in Charleston, S.C. The company specializes in independent media, solo-journalism, art and live events. Falling Together in New Orleans, OPP's first feature-length documentary, tells the stories of volunteers and residents in the continuing aftermath of the 2005 storms that devastated the region. In August 2007, Hoffmire and Davis began taking the film to college campuses and art venues around the country as part of their Hurricane Katrina Media Tour.
ON THE WEB: www.organicprocess.com; www.socialdress-neworleans.blogspot.com/
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